Tag Archives: my Dad

One very strange happening happened to my Dad, Fred, and myself when, in 1970, I accompanied my father down to his parents’ house at number 39, Hartshorne Road. Both his father, Will, and then his mother, Fanny, had recently died, within a few months of each other, both in hospital at Burton-on-Trent, with Fanny unaware of Will’s demise.

Fred was paying regular visits to the property, presumably attempting little by little to clear the house out so that it could be resold. At the time, as a teenager, I was unaware of this, although, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had been, and I could perhaps have stopped him from throwing away so many of Will’s Great War souvenirs such as his Canadian Army uniform, his German soldier’s belt and his collection of old German guns and ammunition. Here’s the front of a very average semi-detached house. The only thing left nowadays from my Grandma and Grandad’s occupancy of No 39 is the sign above the front door. It reads “Holmgarth”, the name given to their house by the first family ever to live there. Here’s the house:

And here’s the old sign:This is the back of the house. Fred probably took this photograph on the very last day before he gave the estate agents the keys and left it for ever:

As we entered the deserted house through the front door, I walked through the hall towards the kitchen. Then I distinctly heard the upstairs toilet flush. I turned round and asked Fred, who was following me through the door and into the hall, how this could have happened, and who it could have been, given that we both knew that the house was locked up and empty.

Fred gave me some non-committal answer at the time, but afterwards, perhaps when he had regained his composure, he told me that, as he was a little way behind me, he had been able to look up the stairs at the sudden noise of the toilet being flushed. He had seen his father, Will, walk out of the toilet, across the short landing and into the bedroom.

Fred, of course, had always maintained that his own house, number 9, Hartshorne Road was haunted. Or rather the garden was, because on a quiet, windless summer’s evening, even though nobody in the two nearby houses smoked a pipe, it was occasionally possible to smell the distinctive aroma of pipe tobacco in the garden. This, Fred explained, was the ghost of one of the railway workers at the next door goods station, who, in the 1930s, was exceptionally keen on working in the evenings in the extensive station house garden. Just once, ironically enough, I smelled that same smell of tobacco, when it was my own turn to visit Fred’s house to clear it for resale after his death.

Let’s look back briefly at No 39 though. As I mucked around with the scan of the original photograph in an effort to improve it, using my entire suite of sophisticated activities (Adjust levels, brightness, colour balance, contrast and image size) I noticed something really weird. Here we are:

There seem to have been faces at the window that my Dad didn’t see as he took the original photograph. Can you see them? I enlarged the photograph. They were still there:

Recently, the Premier League teams released their charges for a seat to watch a game next season.

As you might expect, prices are fixed at an almost unbelievable level for the ordinary working person. The days when an averagely wealthy parent might have taken his two children to a game seem to be long over.
When I was much, much, younger, my Dad used to take my brother and myself to matches at the now demolished Baseball Ground in Derby. Granted, though, the playing surface might occasionally lack a little of the green stuff…

And just now and again, it became a little muddy in places…

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I don’t know how much it cost my Dad, though, because we had season tickets, and I never saw him physically hand over his hard earned cash.

Forty years on, of course, the Baseball Ground is long gone…

I just cannot remember what prices for admission were posted up on the old stands at the Baseball Ground. And in any case, in those early days of the 1970s, there were terraces, where it was even cheaper to watch the game, although admittedly, hooliganism could often run riot.

I am pretty sure though, that, even allowing for the passage of time, my dad was not paying out anywhere near that average cost of £90.24 for a single game at White Hart Lane, or a possible £127 to watch their great rivals, Arsenal.
Unbelievably, if my dad were still with us now, it could cost him almost £300 to take my brother and myself to a Spurs game, and probably more, should we wish to watch Arsenal. Even the cheapest seats would give him too little change from his £100 for him to buy everybody a skinny latte and a prawn sandwich.
And the net result of all this, of course, is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Little teams like QPR or Burnley might optimistically put their prices up, ready for a long and successful stay in the Premier League, but in terms of actually achieving any real footballing success, they stand quite simply no chance whatsoever.

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The days when a team like Derby County could win what would have been the Premier League twice in four years are long gone…

…and the years when a team like Nottingham Forest could win the European Cup in two consecutive seasons have gone with them.
Football, though, was a lot more exciting in those days…

And occasionally, considerably naughtier…

Derby County only missed reaching the European Cup Final by the narrowest of margins. The width of an Italian’s banknote, you might say…
I don’t really know what to offer as advice. Most of us know which football team we are destined to support as a matter of instinct, and, judging by next season’s proposed prices, if we support a London team in particular, we could well be in financial difficulties.

It is, though, more or less impossible to invent an artificial love for Leyton Orient, Stevenage or Dagenham & Redbridge, just because it is cheaper to go inside their stadium and physically watch them play.

I would commend to you, though, not so much the teams in League One and League Two, but the teams lower down the pyramid. Have a look in your local evening newspaper, and see which local clubs are going to be playing on the following Saturday, kicking off probably at the traditional three o’clock. And go and watch one of them. You never know, you might enjoy it. The programme will not be £5. When you ask for “A skinny latte and some nice focaccia, please”, the lady will probably reply, “Yer what??”
And pick a team with a good name, such as… Coventry Sphinx, Tonbridge Angels, Solihull Moors, Pontefract Collieries or even the West Midlands Police.

You may or may not like it, but at least it will not be costing you the best part of a hundred quid. And who knows? You may one day take to them, and realise that you have become a supporter of real football, not showbiz.